


Language Lessons, 5: namelings (1200 words)

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Language Lessons [5]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: 1 Sentence Fiction, Languages, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-06
Updated: 2005-02-06
Packaged: 2018-11-12 12:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11161521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	Language Lessons, 5: namelings (1200 words)

  
  
Jack Sparrow loves the infinite variety of Jack Shaftoe, loves the way that Shaftoe's so ready for him, so easy to 'rouse, when Jack corners him in their cabin, or in a dark angle below decks, or even now in plain view as they stand together at the helm, Jack's right hand steadying the wheel, his left just brushing Shaftoe's firmly-muscled waist and feeling Shaftoe push against the touch, not enough to be obvious (though there ain't a man on board who doesn't know what Jack and Jack are to one another) but enough to register a definite interest: o that interest, enough to make Jack want to hand the helm to one of his crew -- open blue ocean, and another day's sailing before they reach the islands so definitely marked on his chart, so he'll trust 'em with his lovely _Pearl_ \-- and drag Shaftoe below to make good the implicit promise of Jack's hand on his body (damn that shirt; Jack wants skin), and the reciprocal promise of Shaftoe's smile, the sea-blue glance he slides at Jack, the press of his warm flesh against Jack's touch; oh, too long since morning, when they'd woken twined together, already sweating (winter it might be, now that they'd crossed the Equator again, but this close to the Line the sun shone blood-hot all the long year round) and yet unable to draw back from one another's heat; Shaftoe's mouth on Jack's body, Jack's hands slick and busy on Shaftoe's Credential, quick and smooth and easy, enough but not, Jack murmuring Shaftoe's name and Shaftoe breathlessly gasping Jack's, like an especially debauched echo: and, as if he's read Jack's thoughts -- and Shaftoe, though unlettered, is a devoted scholar, or cartographer, or perhaps Inquisitor of Jack Sparrow's self -- Shaftoe says, "Funny, ain't it, us being **namelings** ," and Sparrow frowns at him, for the word's not one he's encountered before, though its significance is clear enough; "Not so strange, Jack," he counters, "given the _universality_ of the name; 'tis coincidence, nothing more;" and Shaftoe, smile broadening at the opportunity for an argument, says, "So when I murmur your name, Jack --" "or moan it," interjects Jack, leaning closer so's not to be overheard, and revelling in the hot look Shaftoe gives him, "or, or cry it aloud for _everyone_ , every man jack, to hear," aha, that's made Shaftoe blush, but he parries quick enough, with, "ah, but for all _they_ know 'tis you imploring _me_ , eh?" which, Jack has to concede, is a fair enough point, for it's as often that way as the other; "when, as I was saying, I murmur your name, it could as easily be you speaking mine," continues Shaftoe, "and it's as if, as if ..." and he's gesturing now, all frustrated -- Jack can feel the surge of energy, through him, the way that he feels the thrum of the _Black Pearl_ 's sails and stays, the sleek weight of the Pacific against her shapely hull, the tension of her as the breeze shifts a point, and Jack, content to run before the wind a little while longer (for this conversation's too intriguing to curtail with the tedious business of trimming and raising), turns the wheel just enough to bring the _Pearl_ around -- and vexed by lack of language, lack of _words_ , to say what he means, and Jack Sparrow both loves and hates to see him thus; loves the outpouring of all that passionate Shaftoe-energy, that elemental force that animates him so often (though Jack Shaftoe has a talent for indolence, too, that Jack often envies) and must be disspelled somehow, frequently being transmuted into something baser and more physical, a different kind of energy that Jack values no less for its animal intensity, and appreciates immensely each time that he's the recipient of all that fabulous urgency and heat and lust, not to mention (since he's thinking of transmutation and transformation: it's that bloody book of Enoch's, no doubt, and Jack resolves to read no more of it) the hot white Essence that Shaftoe produces under such circumstances, under (in fact) Jack's hands and tongue and prick; loves Shaftoe's intellectual frustration -- so easily and enjoyably transformed into a more _physical_ kind of unachieved urge -- for the sheer vivid strength of it, but hates it because it's a crippling thing, a lack, a want, every bit as real as Jack Shaftoe's infamous half-cockedness, though invisible to the eye; that inability to find the right words, to set forth the thoughts in his head (which Jack has found over the course of many conversations, drunken and sober, trivial and profound, to be every iota as subtle and devious and Philosophickal as his own) for Jack to share; and of course Shaftoe, clever witty creative Shaftoe, has no source for more words save Jack himself, for he can't look into any of Jack's treasured books (some, it must be said, more lewd than learned) and find new verbiage there, though Jack loves to read to him from whatever's to hand, novels or treatises or travelogues or instructions to courtiers; so now, seeing Shaftoe so irate with his lack of learning, Jack longs to help him voice that thought, that notion that's wrestling to birth itself from Shaftoe's scowl and the blasphemies he utters as he tries to think aloud; "you're saying, then, that there's more to what's between us than our name," suggests Jack, "though we're ... namelings, was it not? ... true enough, but --"; "-- but when you speak my name and I speak yours," says Shaftoe suddenly, smiling beatifically as though the recipient of some Divine Revelation, "'tis as though we're one, Jack -- one _Jack_ , ha ha -- and in that same way that two voices sing and sound together in music, which I have heard named Harmony, so you and I make an Harmonious whole; and, Jack, our names, our _name_ , is proof enough of it, that though we're different, yet we are conjoined," and perhaps it's not the most _learned_ dissertation that Jack Sparrow's ever heard, but it makes fine sense to him now, that the two of them are tuned the same somehow, that they're linked and joined and made as one; but oh, that word 'conjoined' brings bright shining images to his mind's eye, and he beckons Jack Shaftoe closer, so that there on the deck he can whisper to his love of conjunction, of how he longs to be so deep within Shaftoe's body, so interpenetrated with Shaftoe's tongue and hands even as he pushes in as hard and fast and far as he can and feels the molten heat of Shaftoe's body pressing around him all tight and close and exultant, "an', Jack, were any to see us somehow -- though I want to be the only one to have that entirely wondrous sight of you -- they'd never tell where Jack ended and Jack began," and Shaftoe, hands balling into fists (an infallible sign that he wants to lay 'em, instead, on Jack's eager body), murmurs, "give over the helm, Jack, and come below; for I urgently desire to ... to speak to you, just thee and me, where none can hear us say each other's name."


End file.
